missing time (what i don't know will never hurt me)
by tinyvariations
Summary: Waverly's noticing that things aren't quite...right lately. She's missing time, finding things in her pockets she has no memory of, and she might be losing her mind. Post 2x03, a quick Waverly one-shot. Wayhaught.


The noise is delicate, more suggestion than reality, like an apparition, a ghost that flits in and out of the periphery, lacking shape and substance and all manner of things. The kind of sound that makes one question whether or not they heard anything at all.

Except for Waverly Earp, that is.

It's a testament to the human body, to the survival mechanisms inherent in the human brain that one can attune oneself, so to speak, to the environmental stimuli that matter, to turn the volume up or down, to fiddle with the world's contrast or dim the brightness as needed.

Mothers - or sisters, as the case may be - who wake in the dead of night from a deep slumber, bolting upright in bed and holding their breaths until they hear it again, the sound of the baby girl down the hall crying softly in her bed, another nightmare taking its toll.

A girl living alone in a one-room apartment over the town's watering hole, the railroad tracks visible through the dirt-streaked windows along the wall. Day after day, night after night the train click clacks its way through the deserted streets of Purgatory, its bellowing horn shattering the somnolent stillness, rattling the windows in their frames on its journey. But she sleeps on, her ears dismissing the familiar sound as neutral. As unimportant, unworthy of attention.

Or a father with the uncanny ability to suss out alcohol in the world around him, to hear the crack of a can or the plink of a bottle cap being removed at a mile away. And the weakness to chase after it every time.

And so it is that when her phone trills, the sprightly glissando signalling receipt of a new text message muffled and distorted under a veritable mountain of clothes, Waverly still hears it clearly, and her heartstrings echo, an instantaneous slide up the scale.

The noise repeats itself, and her heart jolts another octave.

Nicole.

Hurriedly pushing clothes aside, her hands slip-sliding against a silk blouse, grappling with the hem of a cotton button-down, she finally feels cool metal beneath her outstretched fingers, and with a quick tug, she pulls her phone free from its fabric grave, eager to read the latest message.

hey baby, looks like i'm actually going to get off duty on time

so where are you taking me?

patience, officer

;)

you know i'm not good at waiting :)

The grin pulls at the corners of her mouth, straining deliciously in her cheeks. It's flirtatious, and she bites at her lower lip mischievously when she responds, savoring the buzz circulating in her veins, sparking electric in her limbs. It's a heady feeling, and Waverly wants to drown in it.

Things between them have improved in the last couple of days, the ground beneath their feet evening out, the two of them seemingly beginning to find their footing. Together. Sure, there are still some...boundaries to navigate. Still the specter of resentment lingering at the periphery, a discordant note sounding quietly beneath their conversations.

But it's a known quantity, a thing named and acknowledged, and Waverly tries to make sure she walks the line, that she keeps her steps true. So. Keep her distance during work hours? She's kept busy at the homestead all day, so easy check. Hands to herself? Difficult in proximity, but working on it. Thank god texting during shift is still on the table. But Nedley's couch seems to be forever off limits.

Damn I miss that couch.

With a weighted sigh and a shake of the head, Waverly returns to the task at hand: what to wear on their date. Obviously, she wants to look good. Like...maybe-they-don't-make-it-past-the-Jeep good. Her cheeks strain with another grin, and there's an answering flutter in her chest. Eyeing the haphazard pile of clothes on her bed, she gets back to work, hangers clacking noisily together as she sifts through the stack, shuffling from item to item, pile to pile.

Nope.

Nope.

Definitely not.

Maybe?

Finding one that catches her eye, she pries it loose from its setting and throws it over her head in a blur of movement, her arms rocketing skyward in preparation. When the fabric settles about her shoulders, she segues into a pirouette, turning and stepping quickly to the side, lining up so that she can appraise the outfit's possibilities in the full length mirror set against the wall.

Turning this way, then that, her nose scrunches and her brow furrows, her pursed lips pulling to the side in less than thrilled consideration.

Nope.

The second effort begins with excellent promise - an appealing color, a flattering cut. But her eyes fall on a stain on the cuff, and once seen she finds she can't just unsee it.

A sigh. A toss. And on to the next one.

With a shimmy, she pulls the fitted sweater over her head and chest, pushing her arms through the three-quarters sleeves, and with a final tug or two, it settles into place. One look at her reflection, at the smug grin, the raised eyebrow, and she knows immediately-

This is the one.

The skirt is easy, it's a matter of seconds to add it to the ensemble. Zipping it with a flourish, she does a twirl in front of the mirror, pleased with what she sees. Positive Nicole will be, too.

Now she just needs her boots. Her good ones, knee high and velvety suede and head-turning all the way. But when she pulls them from their place at the bottom of her closet, her brows furrow, and her face darkens.

There's mud on her suede boots.

THERE'S. MUD. ON. HER. BOOTS.

Her cheeks flame, the anger rising in an instant, like a thunderstorm gathering on a hot summer afternoon.

Did Wynonna borrow these without asking?

It's her first impulse, but after a moment she slowly blows out the lungful of air she'd be holding, deflating in place as quickly as she'd puffed up. It's ludicrous. Not only is this the opposite of her sister's style, but they run small - Wynonna would have a hell of a time getting her feet in them in the first place. Managing to walk more than a few paces without drawing blood? Not happening.

Her cheeks begin to cool, and snatching a soft brush from her dressing table along with a trash can, Waverly wiggles between the piles of clothes on her bed, clearing a small place to sit and begin the arduous task of cleaning her boots.

The mud is dry at least, and portions of it brush off with ease. A piece of straw falls from the sole, disappearing into the trash can below.

She'd worn these the other day - the business with Perry and B-Train and the Genie of the Hockey Trophy - but she didn't do anything crazy. Well, not by Earp standards, at least. Certainly not the nightmare of trudging through gallons and gallons of spider slime. That entire spider smashing outfit had to be trashed. It was a total loss.

There are some things that just won't come out of fabric.

But the other day? She'd spent most of the day in town. Haunting the halls of her old high school. Or pounding the pavement with Black Badge. She'd remember if she had tracked through mud in her favorite boots.

Right?

Waverly hesitates at the thought, biting her cheek.

Maybe...not.

It's getting worse.

It's like she...blinks. Like she's walked into a room and can't quite remember why she got up in the first place.

And it's been happening more often lately.

A voice sounds in her head, all cool logic and detached analysis - like an armchair psychologist regurgitating in her brain. An image flits through her thoughts of herself, clad in a velvet smoking jacket, sitting in a wingback chair, her legs crossed, her hand cupping her chin thoughtfully. She rolls her eyes at the ridiculousness.

The loss of a sister, a sliver of guilt for not feeling as much grief on the subject as perhaps she should. Or really any grief, when it comes right down to it, except for what it's done to Wynonna. The shock of finding out she's not an Earp. Or possibly not an Earp, she amends. That certainly brings with it a toxic brew of repressed anger and depression, resentment festering just beneath the surface. Or even the eggshells of figuring out her steps and missteps in a new relationship. Any one of these things would be a strain on someone's faculties.

All three at once?

Wingback Waverly clucks her tongue and shakes her head slowly, as if to say, "You poor dear."

Some spacey-ness is to be expected. Totally normal. Absolutely nothing to worry about.

Exchanging the brush for an emery board, she flips to the fine side and carefully rubs the suede with the grain, watching with guarded relief as the dried dirt loosens and cracks. A clump falls into the trash can with a light thud.

It's just...it's happening more.

Wynonna swears up and down that the other day, when she borrowed a tube of lipstick for her "date" with Perry, she gave it right back. Right then and there.

But Waverly doesn't remember that happening. So obviously it didn't.

Right?

The first time Waverly asked for the tube back, Wynonna just shrugged her shoulders, said she already did, and Waverly wrote it off, figured maybe "putting it back" was more of a generalization, like throwing it anywhere in Waverly's room or in the bathroom might fall into that particular category. But she's looked everywhere. And it's her favorite color.

When Waverly asked a second time, Wynonna repeated herself and then paused, narrowing her eyes and cocking her head ever so slightly, and the air between them turned...sour. It's a look Waverly knows, a look that's hesitant and cautious in one moment, calculating and analyzing the next.

Like she's looking for cracks. Looking for wounds.

She's looked at Waverly like that a lot over the years, and this time Waverly bristled.

Turning the left boot over in her grip, her hands move gently, careful to keep the pressure light, fearful of damaging the delicate material.

Her memories are...hazy, for a lack of a better word. When movies want to depict a dream sequence, they tend to have this gauzy quality to them so the audience knows in the blink of an eye that what they're seeing isn't really happening, that it's not real.

Waverly's memories have the same ethereal feeling to them, when she tries to focus, tries to remember these...dissonant occasions, like with the lipstick. The images are...off, all blurry edges, indistinct figures.

They're shadowy things. They leave a bad taste in her mouth.

One or two instances she can ignore, just blips on the radar, a sign of the stress of her day to day reality, fighting demons with her cursed sister and her undead friend. Like that's normal, right?

But then there was Tucker.

Purgatory is full of bad news and bad characters, and yet at the end of the day, if Waverly had to choose between spending time with Tucker Gardener or your run of the mill revenant, well...she'd have to think about it. Hard.

She remembers him approaching her on the street, and the memory is clear - that smug look on his face, the way he oozed privilege and disdain from every pore, it clung to him like smoke. He said something about Nicole, and then-

And then he's scrambling down the street, turning every few paces to eyeball her. The disdain is gone, transformed into the stink of fear, a solid thing, pungent and repulsive. But that doesn't make sense. She was busy talking on the phone when he walked up...right?

His face swims in her memories, but the edges blur, melt, and the color seeps away.

Waverly looks down at her hands, her knuckles white, the brush digging into the side of the boot. Blinking furiously, she loosens her grip, switching boots and quickly resuming the measured strokes, careful to keep the brush even, careful not to disturb the grain. It's easy - so easy - to damage.

That's the same day she found a silver bracelet nestled in the silk pocket of her faux fur coat. Cold isn't exactly her favorite, and when her hands threatened to turn into giant blocks of ice at the end of her arms, she stuck them in her coat pockets to try and eke out a tiny measure of warmth, to get the blood flowing back into her extremities once more. When her fingers tangled with the chain, she tugged it loose, pulled it into the light of day, turning it over and over in her palm in confusion.

But it was utterly foreign. Certainly not hers, not Nicole's. Thinking she'd ask Wynonna about it later, she'd returned it to her pocket for safekeeping. They were out late that night, and it wasn't until she got to her room, started shedding layers that it crossed her mind again.

Only when she reached into her pocket, it wasn't there.

The pockets are deep, a near impossibility for it to simply fall out somewhere along the way, lying on the ground for a passerby to snatch up and claim.

Was it ever really there to begin with?

The thought bursts into existence with a crash, the kind of all-encompassing question that immediately worms its way into every nook and cranny, insinuates itself into the tissue, mixes with her blood.

It's getting worse.

"Waverly!" The voice is sharp, purposeful. Even a little strained, like it's not the first time she's had to say it.

Startled, Waverly's eyes dart to the doorway, where Wynonna leans against the frame, her head cocked, her gaze guarded. Again. Wynonna's mouth opens, like she's about to say something, but uncharacteristically, it closes just as quickly.

When Waverly looks down, her knuckles are white.

She sets the boot on the floor, wiping her hands on the corner of her bedspread.

"What'd you do to your boots?" Wynonna asks, watching Waverly carefully.

I don't know, she wants to say. Wants to cry.

Instead, she shrugs her shoulders and grins nonchalantly. "You headed to town?" Waverly asks, wiping away the last of the dirt with her thumb.

"Yup, thought I might see what Mercedes is up to- " Wynonna pauses, considering, before adding, "You, uh, got a Haught date tonight?" over-emphasizing Haught, a shit-eating grin blooming on her face. "You see what I did...yeah…so...you going to be out late or do we need to go back over the, uh, panties on the doorknob talk again?" Raising her eyebrows in emphasis, she adds, "I really really don't want to see your, um, routine again."

The eyeroll is dramatic and perhaps a little excessive, but it feels right. "I'll text you, how about that?"

A nod of the head, but still she lingers in the doorway, chewing absently at the inside of her cheek. Watching. Analyzing. WIth a quick inhale, she finally mutters softly, as if she's not sure she should be asking, "You, umm- you feeling alright baby girl?"

Yes.

No.

I don't know what's going on…

But she hears her voice climb, the tried and true barmaid sunshine turned up to full blast, tooth-achingly sweet. "Peachy keen, jellybean," she says.

"So-" Wynonna begins again, her tone contrived, "how about we have a sister day tomorrow? Only Earps allowed. You in?" Her gaze is hopeful, but there's a wariness behind her eyes that burns into Waverly's skin.

Only Earps.

"You bet," Waverly sing-songs. She forces her smile wider, impossibly wider, and it cuts into her cheeks.

Blood tickles in her throat.

But it's enough for Wynonna. With a nod, she steps back into the hallway, her boots falling heavily on the staircase as she descends.

The front door closes a few seconds later, the hinges creaking in protest at the motion.

* * *

It's another thirty minutes before Waverly slides into the driver's seat of the Jeep. Her movements are smooth, efficient, betraying a grace heretofore unseen as she pulls the door closed behind her and starts the engine.

Turning onto the county road, the muscles in her thigh bunch, her foot pressing heavily on the gas pedal. The needle inches higher and higher, hitting and passing the speed limit in record time. The wind whistles against the windshield.

She smiles smugly, feels the heavy thud of her heartbeat in her veins.

When a curve approaches, she takes her foot off the gas, shifting over to tap the brakes. The movement shakes loose a damp clod of fresh dirt from the sole of her boots, a few pieces of straw stuck in the mix.

Waverly Earp doesn't notice. Her smile shines.


End file.
